Lilacs, Ghosts and Nearly-Savoury Biscuits
by Alinyaalethia
Summary: Somewhere in The Blythes are Quoted, someone alludes to the family having 'one son dead and another crippled.' We know from the text, I think, that Jem is okay. At any rate, this grew out of that quote, a kind of 'what if' I wanted to explore.
1. Chapter 1

In after years, when Una remembered the beginning, she would remember him coming up the garden path and finding her cutting the lilacs back. Ingleside was askew with the world, and she was too, and it was the sense of shared uselessness that solidified their friendship.

'Mother loves lilacs,' Shirley had said by way of greeting.

She had said, 'I'll send some home with you, remind me.' Then, because she wasn't sure if the pause should be filled or not, 'I love them too, but they will take over this corner of the garden if I don't stop them.'

He said, 'can I do anything?'

No, no, she had nearly finished, then in a fit of manners, 'here I am keeping you outside and you surely didn't come round to talk gardening. Can I give you anything? Coffee? Tea?'

Shirley said, 'I seem to remember your preference is for tea, but you mustn't feel…' but she was motioning him inside and into the drawing room, arms full of lilac cuttings still, saying, 'give me half a minute to put the kettle on. You're sure tea's all right?'

* * *

It was, and it rapidly became a habit. They didn't talk much, he because he was no great talker and she because she had never been sure how to talk to him and never thought of herself as having anything worth saying in any case. But it was companionable silence, punctuated now and again by Bruce, who came tumbling in to say goodnight to his sister and was duly and lovingly sent out with a kiss and 'Good Night God Bless,' as if it were all one word, 'Goodnightgodbless.' Sometimes Rosemary was there, but often Shirley met her in the lane, on her way to Ingleside as he was on his way to the Manse. He presumed she came back to settle Bruce, because in those long evenings Una never did, and he assumed it was Bruce that stopped Rosemary sitting with them of an evening.

* * *

It was afternoon the day he came with the news he was going away, anxious to do his bit, more anxious about telling her so. In the end, he didn't have to.

As she handed him his teacup she said, 'when will you go?'

He said, 'Soon,' and in response to his unasked question,

'You had a birthday recently, I didn't miss it.' Followed, impulsively on her part by, 'promise you'll come back.'

And he pressed her hand as he took the teacup, a silent promise that one way or another they would sit here, like this again, and talk of things that weren't full of ghosts and fearfulness. When he got up to leave she saw him to the door and called out, 'God go with you,' the way only she could have done.

Hours later, she would be startled to find she could still feel the warmth and roughness of the hand that had pressed hers, just as he continued to hear, in all the long hours of what followed, her voice the middle of the soprano register, reaching him on the garden walk, 'God go with you!'

* * *

And in a way, He did. At least he came back, which was more than could be said for Walter on that night when Little Dog Monday howled unbearably until the birds took over. Long ago now. That he had not come back in tact, short one limb, meant that of course anything that might have begun over tea would have to stop. Would have to stop so completely, that when Shirley finally was back in Glen St Mary, his first impulse was to walk up to the Manse. It was late and he worried about Mother Susan and Mother. About the way his father might look at him.

As ever, it was Una that came to the door and the first thing she said was 'let me look at you.' Yes, let her look because surely that would very completely stop whatever impulse it was that had made her extract that promise from him. 'But it's good to see you,' she said, and then, 'come in, have you eaten?'Which was so very much not what he'd expected that he was startled into saying that no, he had only just come up from the train. 'There's casserole put by if you would like some. It's only pulses… the meat ran out earlier in the week and so it's been all pulses and vegetables since but…'

'I don't want to be any trouble.'

'You won't be. You said you hadn't eaten. Sit.' He did not know the Una who spoke in imperatives and told him what to do. 'I'm sorry about the pulses.'

'Don't be. Pulses are good. There are worse things than pulses.' Much worse, usually tinned. Pulses sounded very good after the trip he'd had.

She was laughing in spite of herself. 'Tell that to Bruce for me. Jims too, I think Rilla would appreciate it.'

'How is Rilla?' He had missed her, the little sister he had made so much of teasing.

'Growing into herself. She and Jims are good for each other.'

Shirley tried to picture this, and could a little, he had left Rilla very nearly grown up after all. Una, who had disappeared into the kitchen, now reappeared with the casserole and tea.

'I hope tea's all right. Only I thought because…'

'I seem to remember your preference is for tea.'

She smiled at that. 'I hope you're having some too.' And she was back into the kitchen for another cup and saucer. They did not talk, but then it was enough to be silent, it had so often been.

* * *

Tea became a habit again. It was good to sometimes be out of Ingleside and just at first Rainbow Valley frightened him. They had all been there as children and they could never be all together again…which was just one of the conversations he was not having with Una. And yet, it was not like being at Ingleside, where the unspoken conversations were a tangible thing that sat in the room while he sat with his family. He relayed news that surely Rilla had already given her, she told him what Rilla had certainly already told him about Bruce. They had tea with Osbornes because rations somehow reached far enough for Una to bake such things, although she would apologise for the paucity of sugar.

'I'm afraid they're very nearly savoury,' she said, and he laughed, because after so much bad food it was more than possible to enjoy nearly-savoury Osborne biscuits. There had to be biscuits, Una explained, because she felt it was an unkindness to offer a guest tea without biscuits.

Once she said, 'we were so worried when you didn't come back right away, but Rosemary and Susan both said "no news is good news," and I said it with them, because we could hardly tell your mother anything else and we all wanted it to be true, and it was. I'm glad.' But that was all.

A different afternoon he noticed, coming into the drawing room ahead of her, a cushion that hadn't been there before; clearly her work because Faith's satin stitch always buckled. She noticed him looking and said, 'I worked it off a prayer card of mother's I found somewhere when we were clearing out. I needed something to do and if my hands were working I wasn't thinking about what might happen to Carl and Jerry, to all of you.' _All shall be well and all shall be well_, said the split-stitch writing and he wanted to believe it. _All manner of thing shall be well_. He put the thought to one side and asked instead about Bruce.

* * *

He ran into Bruce the first time he ventured into Glen St Mary after coming home, that is, went properly into the town and not just over to the Manse. Bruce, coming out of school for lunch, ran at him and wrapped his arms around Shirley's legs. Apparently he didn't mind about the wooden one either, or was too small to understand.

'You came back!' He said brightly. 'You came back and made Una's eyes bright again. They went dull like your mum's but then you came sometimes for tea and they were almost better, and then you went away and they were dull and she didn't have time and was too tired to play. She and mother had their sewing with them but they didn't really sew, the fabric just got hoop marks and Una was always doing fancy-work. It's very good and you'd like it, you have to look real close to see the pattern because she's working it in white, and mother says you need really clean hands for whitework like that, that only Una could do that. But you're back now and it doesn't matter because you've made her eyes bright again.'

All this in practically one breath while Bruce beamed at him. Shirley was too taken aback to say very much in reply. He was not, on reflection, especially good with children, least of all talkative ones, and Bruce was in a mood to be talkative. He turned back to walk with Bruce, uneasy about letting him walk alone, and suddenly not wanting to go into town.

Quite suddenly Bruce said, 'promise you won't make Una unhappy? Promise you won't let the light in her eyes go away ever again?' Shirley had the uneasy feeling he was being asked to make a promise he couldn't, or mightn't be able to keep. 'I'm very fond of your sister.' He said by way of answer.

'But _promise_,' said Bruce. Shirley picked him up and made the boy swoop up and down within his arms - this with some difficulty because Bruce by then was well on his way to growing up.

'I'm an aeroplane!' Bruce said and put his arms out as if they were wings. Then said, 'you still haven't promised.'

He was saved answering by the sight of a figure in white and blue linen running the length of the road. That it was Una was evident by the plait that ran down her back and she stopped short when she saw them. She was flushed from running and the colour suited her, he thought, but Bruce had disconcerted him and even if he hadn't, it was hardly something to say. She was brushing loose strands of hair out of her eyes.

'Bruce, I worried when you were late coming in. Then I thought perhaps you'd gone into the General Store and were spoiling lunch with sweets and I thought- but it's all right if he's with you.'

Shirley set Bruce down and he ran ahead of them, arms out, crying 'Look Una, I'm an aeroplane!'

Una had turned to him, had said, 'why not come to lunch? It is only sandwiches but I'm sure we can stretch to sandwiches for three.'

He sat with Bruce and talked planes, they did not reprise their earlier conversation and he was relieved.

* * *

Later Susan would say, 'we missed you at lunch.'

Shirley had said, 'I was unexpectedly at the Manse.'Susan raised an eyebrow. 'Not you too,' he had said. 'I've just had Bruce making me promise, or wanting me to promise, not to hurt anyone.'

'Not to hurt his sister you mean,' Susan had said robustly, 'and quite right he is too. He's a good boy Bruce, you can tell he's a minister's child. I don't mind telling you I worried he'd be spoiled, having practically two mothers, if you count Una too, I mean, and everyone does. But they've done well by him and it's as well I never said a word.'

Shirley laughed. Impulsively he relayed Bruce's conversation in its entirety and felt rewarded when Mother Susan's eyes sparkled and she laughed long and with him.

Then she stopped and said, 'I hope you did promise.' He wanted to laugh again, to tell her to not talk nonsense, but Mother Susan didn't talk nonsense. 'There wasn't anything to promise. We're good friends. We have things in common to talk about.'

Susan snorted. 'Good luck telling Mrs Cornelia that. I'm not the only one who's noticed, you know. And good luck convincing your mum.' He shook his head. 'I shouldn't have to. It's quite obviously-' 'Tisn't obvious at all, love. I can see what's in front of me and I won't have you sit there and try to come up with reasons why you can't or won't follow through. You always have before.' This last spoken gently, softly, and it niggled at him.

'If I had come back all in one piece'

"You know that doesn't matter.' Susan said, almost fiercely now. 'If there's one person who won't notice or care it's Una Meredith.'

He didn't like to say that she had never ostensibly noticed. That when he had come up to the Manse that first evening with the casserole, she had only taken his hands and held him at arm's length and said, 'but it's good to see you again,' as if everything were as it had been.

'Besides,' and this half seriously, 'Rosemary would thank you for giving her her kitchen back. They've been battling over it, albeit lovingly, for far too long. You can't have two home-makers in the same house, it just doesn't work.'

This time he did laugh. 'Seriously though,' Susan went on, ' you did promise, didn't you?'

'Not really, no,' he had said, not looking at her. 'Besides, we were interpreted and never finished the conversation.'

'You mean to then?'

'I didn't say that.' He still wasn't looking at her.

'Then you'd better make the Manse less of a habit. To all intents and purposes you're courting her. I can't _be_ plainer than that, love.'

They were having the conversation they had spent months now not-having, and he was glad that it was Mother Susan he was having it with. Nor was it the conversation he'd anticipated, because he hadn't thought the Manse family would come into it. "I really don't think she sees it that way,' he said softly.

Susan, rising from the table and gathering up crockery, had said, sounding almost exasperated, 'for Goodness sake, listen to Bruce and look at her eyes! They are bright again. He knows her, too. Haven't I told you she's as good as another mother to him?'

'I don't see how Bruce-'

'No,' Susan had said, 'no, you wouldn't. You're not looking properly. Think on it at least.'

* * *

He had gone down to Rainbow Valley then, for the first time in a long time, but it seemed safer than the Manse, in light of Mother Susan's ideas. His mother's ideas too, she had said. How many other people, he wondered, had had the same thought? He had not expected her to be by the river, but of course she would be, he thought now, it had been a haunt of Walter's and he ought to have remembered. That he hadn't was the result of the absence of the ghost that had once established them as friends.

'I've missed coming here' he said because he didn't feel he could relay Susan's conversation.

'I have too, life took over all through the war' she said, but she smiled as she said it. 'Rosemary's taken over Bruce, he wanted some story I didn't know and I thought I was probably in the way. We take him turn-about of an evening at the moment.'

He stretched his legs out in an effort to be comfortable. He still wasn't used to having only the one properly.

'Are you all right?' She sounded anxious. 'I could go fetch-' 'no,' he said and she said,'you didn't look comfortable give me a minute and-' 'no, I meant I was all right like this. You don't mind?'

She shook her head, 'no, why should I? You came back and that was important. It would have been awful if we had lost any more of the Rainbow Valley family, which is what we were really. There was such a gap after…and I'm not brave like Faith or your mother.'

The crickets chirped, their cheerfulness at odds with the memories they were both reliving. 'When,' she began and stopped, making a motion with her hands. 'I shouldn't have asked.' She said, as if some apology were needed for such a natural question.

Then, in spite of not meaning to, in spite of having resolved not too, he was telling her about the plane, and falling, not really crashing because it wasn't high enough for that, but how he was trapped all the same and couldn't get out, the infection and the medical care and how, even if there hadn't been the infection, there wasn't very much they could have done. He had never spoken so much before, so quickly, and he was reminded of Bruce's breathless remembrance about his mother and sister in wartime. _They had their sewing but they never really sewed and, and, and_…He was smiling now.

'What are you thinking?' this asked gently, from far away, as if she were somewhere else. He didn't answer right away, and while he reached for a way of telling her about Bruce, he became aware of someone humming, and it was a tune he could almost place. He had never thought of Una as musical, and was trying now to remember if she had ever lapsed into humming things before. He decided not. The tune, he realized, with its easy predictability, was a hymn, 'All My Hope on God is Founded.' Of course he would have settled on Una as likely to sit by the brook in Rainbow Valley and hum hymns, if he had to settle on anyone he thought. Or at least, now that the reality was in front of him he liked to think he would have. He never did answer her question, never did communicate Bruce's memory of the hoop-marks. He said only,

'Bruce says you are working on a project.' 'Mm?' She was back again, suddenly, the hymn fading as she spoke.

'Yes, a tablecloth. Whitework, nothing terribly much to look at. It was something to do in the time I didn't have. I used to be able to do a tablecloth in a month. That's a memory from years ago now.'

'I'm sure it took all my sisters ages longer, even before,' and he made a gesture with his hands, leaving the awfulness unsaid. 'None of your sisters are sewers really. Rilla's becoming one, but not what Bruce would call fancy-work, and I can't really see it suiting her. Besides, practical sewing is far more useful and just as tricky. It was something Rosemary taught me, when she first came to us. She tried to teach Faith to, but she doesn't like to sit still so long.' For a moment, Shirley remembered Faith as she had been as a little girl. No, he couldn't see Rosemary making a needle-woman out of her. But then, he had never before thought of Una as someone who did much needlework either. They parted with the sun, she extending an invitation to him that promised tea and nearly-savoury Osborn's.

* * *

His mother met him on the porch. 'Susan says you want a hint,' she said without any preamble. 'Three guesses as to why girls start on whitework tablecloths.'

He looked at her curiously. 'It was something to do, she said,' then, 'I didn't realize you'd seen it.'

She was smiling at him, and for the first time in a long while, her eyes are almost sparkling. He thinks about Bruce saying _her eyes were bright. Don't let them become dull again_. 'Guess again,' his mother says. He shakes his head. He has an idea of her imaginings, but his mother's thought-world is, or certainly used to be, a vivid and fanciful place.

'It is only something to think about,' she says, understanding him better than he thinks. On his way in he stops to give her a kiss, saying as he does so, 'Good night and God bless,' as if it is all one word, and belatedly realizes whom he has caught this habit from. 'Good night,' she says and she is smiling. She does not need three guesses to work out where her boy would acquire the gently religious turn of phrase.


	2. Chapter 2

For a little while, they migrated to Rainbow Valley to talk, or to be silent, as fancy took them. She never said, but he was left with a distinct impression that mother Susan's ideas were not restricted to mother Susan, and he had an uncomfortable feeling they had reached the Manse. But she would not say, and it was hardly the sort of thing you could ask. And yet, if any such notion had reached Una, she was not unduly troubled by it, because their mutual reticence was not tangible, did not have as much presence as Rilla's awful ginger cat, nor did it hang in the air, waiting to be spoken of, as Walter's ghost had done. It was enough, seemingly, to deviate from tea with nearly-savoury Osbornes and to call to mind the world as it had once been.

The Dog Days were nearly over and the days had begun to draw in again, when she intercepted him on his way down to the valley and said gently, 'not this evening. Rilla and Ken have remembered it at last. I did wonder that we should never have happened upon them before.'

She was surprised to find she minded as much as she did, and sincerely hoped she did not look as she felt. She did not for a minute think they had seen her come down, or go away. For they had been sitting beneath the tree lovers, looking heavenward and speaking quietly, as one would in church, and she had not wanted to interrupt, or to explain how and why she had come to be there. All these thoughts followed in swift succession as she stood now, reaching for further small-talk, so that she was surprised when he, quite without warning, offered his arm and said, 'let's walk then. Ingleside is full to bursting with wedding plans and I can't get away from them. Everyone is thinking too loudly.'

She took his arm and leaned on it, as if this was a thing they did often, a habit in the same way that tea was. She adjusted without meaning to, to walk at the pace he set, slower than she might have done, and when she said 'people will talk,' her voice was far-away and absent, so that he knew she did not really mean it.

Cautiously he said, 'I thought they'd already begun talking?' and Una said, 'do they? I hadn't noticed. I think the Glen women have got it into their heads they can't tell me things. It comes of being a minister's daughter.'

After that he relaxed, and allowed himself to let Susan's conversation with him fall to one side, and smiled in spite of himself. It was on the tip of her tongue to say 'what are you thinking,' as Faith had often said to Jem, or Rosemary to her father, but she did not and they walked on in companionable quiet. They had nearly gained the harbour when somewhere, away, away the church bell began to toll the hour.

Una said, 'is that the time? The days really have shortened. A month ago we would still have had light.' And they turned, by mutual agreement, back towards the Glen and towards the Manse.

He said, without really thinking, 'people really will talk if we're out much later.'

She said, 'it will be all right. I'll be back in time to say goodnight to Bruce. He's outgrown it really, but it's an awful thing to put yourself to sleep, and I promised once I'd never let him find that out.'

He did not say that this was not what he'd been thinking; there was too much sense in it and he preferred it to the prospect of Miss Cornelia on the veranda, chatting with his mother about things that were not. It would be all right as long as they got back before Bruce went to sleep.

* * *

If the Glen did talk, he did not hear of it. Mother Susan, having said her piece, said no more, and left the rest to Bruce and his anxiety for a promise. Susan knew, that promise would niggle her 'little brown boy' and so she let him worry it out in his own time. In the meantime, she would do her best to combat the women who talked, and their ideas, even if, in a far-away corner of her mind, they were her ideas too.

* * *

Only once did Susan try to bully Una into talking about it. She had brought round a parcel of tomatoes and carrots from the Manse and in response, she had said so calmly, and with such steady colour, 'we're really only good friends Susan, surely you know that,' that for a moment Susan wavered.

Outwardly she said 'well I leave it to you to convince the Glen otherwise.'

Una said, 'by all means. Is there anything I can do to help?' practically all in one breath, so Susan passed her some onions and a good knife.

'Tell me about this tablecloth.'

'I rather thought Rosemary _had_ told you. It's only whithework.'

Susan sniffed, 'only!' and added, 'I start to see Rosemary's point about the kitchen, you know. Not so much as a 'by your leave,' and its not as if Rilla couldn't have done those. She's getting real knacky with cooking.'

'Maybe,' said Una patiently, 'but if I'm going to talk I've got to be doing something.'

'Like pouring tea?'

'Like pouring tea,' said Una evenly.

'About this tablecloth that's only whitework, what started it?'

The onions were beginning to get to Una's eyes. 'It was a project. Something to do when it was too late to garden, the washing up was done, and I didn't want to think about Carl's eye or Jerry going away again, or- ' she stopped and thanked God for the onions.

'All right love?' said Susan anxiously. Una dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve and forcibly swallowed the sensation of tightness at her throat. 'It's onions. I was reliably informed by Aunt Martha that my mother was just the same. I know Faith is. Rosemary has a trick, something to do with cutting them away from you, which I've not got the hang of. Not for want of trying.'

'This tablecloth,' said Susan with determination, 'is it nearly finished?'

'It is finished. I've put it into my- ' she had almost said 'hope chest, ' which is certainly what Rosemary called it, but Susan was in a Mood, '-in a box in the attic. With mother's wedding dress and things. I expect a lot of it I'll give to Faith when , well you know about that.'

Susan raised her eyebrows. She had raised them before, over talk of 'boxes' – didn't she know all about boxes in attics?- and she raised them now at the gentle sidestepping of Faith's wedding, as if weddings were somehow improper and not to be talked about. 'Don't you think you will want them betimes?' she said, because it seemed somehow more tactful.

'I shouldn't think so,' said Una,' the Manse has its share. Is that enough onions?'

'Lots. You don't think you'll go away from the Manse ever?'

Una cursed whatever had possessed her to sacrifice the onions and settled for worrying a tea towel. 'Where would I go? Besides, I feel needed there and useful.'

'Even with Bruce growing up so big?' 'Oh he accepted long ago that he was doomed to be fussed over by me. When he was eight he said 'I'm not a baby anymore,' and I said he would always be for me because I was his sister and never had to let him grow up.

He said, 'well I suppose that's all right, but only if you promise to sing 'Gypsy River' and tell me the story of the Pied Piper on the nights when you are in charge of bedtime, for as long as you fuss.''

Susan burst out laughing. 'Did you?'

'Of course, a promise is a great thing with Bruce.'

Susan said, and tried to say neutrally, 'you don't need to tell _me_.'

'No, I don't suppose I do; they're a great thing at Ingleside too.' Saying which, Una relinquished the tea towel and made her excuses to get back to the Manse.

* * *

But she had not gone directly back to the Manse. She had wandered instead through Rainbow Valley, all its nooks and corners, mercifully free of sweethearts. And for the first time she did not dwell on the dear, dark and dead boy who read poetry under the tree but tried over and over to shape her own thoughts into some kind of order. Because it had been his far away memory that had arisen over the onions, that had made Susan look at her anxiously; made her say 'all right, love?' And it was the memory, more than Susan's gentle and pointed talk, that she minded. _Wh__y _ had she minded? Surely it was natural to remember, when they had been talking about the war? But she had remembered for so long, so persistently, and the other evening, she had just begun to think that maybe...she hadn't forgotten exactly, how could she? but she had begun to think that perhaps the memory was receding, settling into a corner of her mind rather than the forefront. Would that have been so awful? She thought perhaps not, and it was this, the failure of a memory to keep away, that she minded so very much.

She had gone back to the Manse then, afraid in case anyone should call, but nobody did, there was only Rosemary, who looked at her anxiously when she came in and moved towards the stairs without so much as 'how are you?' but said nothing. Then, in the privacy of her own room, she had hunted out Walter's letter, startled that she had to look at all, and read it over and over, trying to make sense of it. Oh, it was supposed to be for her and Rilla, he'd said that, he'd run out of time, she knew that too, but wasn't it addressed to Rilla and riddled through with Rilla's name? Well it would be, letters to people are like that. Only at the end did she seem to come into it at all, and then only slightly, a thoughtful acknowledgement of her letters and perhaps her dependability. She sat on the framed cross quilt and read it until it was no longer readable, no longer individual words but confused ideas run together, and she shut her eyes and prayed about it.

* * *

She was brought back to earth by soft knocking at the door, Rosemary's knock, she thought. Then Rosemary's voice, 'can I come in love?'

She folded the letter away and placed it in the dresser drawer, so that when Rosemary came in, she found her almost'daughter sitting on the bed with her hands pressed to her eyes to clear them from the sensation of over-reading. But she could not know that was the cause, and so, beginning to comb out Una's hair with her fingers, she said, 'can you tell me about it?'

It occurred to Una then that if anyone could understand, it would be Rosemary. 'I don't know - I don't know what it is,' she had said, truthfully enough. 'It's only, when I was round at Ingleside, Susan said-'

Rosemary does not hear the rest properly because she is making a mental note that if Susan Baker has upset her Una, they will have Words. She does not think she voices the thought, but she must have done because now Una is laughing a little and saying, 'no, no, she didn't really say _anything _Rosemary, that's just it. We were talking about so much nothing really. Only- only suddenly the war came into it, I don't know how, it was such ordinary conversation, but it got mixed up with the war and it made me remember-'

Rosemary had put her arms around Una then and pulled her close, murmuring into her hair, 'oh love, oh love,' so softly and gently that Una can almost imagine herself a child again, victim to a failed project of schoolroom teasing.

She closes her eyes and says, 'I didn't think...I thought only Rilla...' and Rosemary says, 'Oh darling, of course I knew, only you wouldn't tell me so I couldn't say. And I wanted so much, still want, to help, because I know too, what that feels like.'

For the first time since Rosemary has come in, Una looks at her properly. Then she puts her arms round this almost-mother, more than a stepmother, who's been so good to her, and says 'how could I have forgotten? I wish you'd made me remember.'

'No,' Rosemary is saying now, 'it was only ever my business it you wanted it to be.'

They sit quietly for a while after that, and then, because Rosemary feels they will never have this conversation otherwise, she says gently, 'but you said Susan never really said anything.'

'No-o, it was the memory. And I haven't really thought abut it in, well I don't remember. And it was it resurfacing like that, when I wasn't- when I thought I might have gone on with life- and it- I didn't know what to do with it because I haven't thought...in so long now...' and she closes her eyes and leans her head on Rosemary's shoulder.

'Of course it startled you,' she is saying. 'And I don't think you could ever forget, never really let a memory like that go. It _was_ an awful thing to happen. And it mattered, still matters maybe. More than you'd like it to?'

'I don't know,' Una says quietly. 'I don't know and I wish I did.'

'You'll sort it out.' Rosemary says resolutely. 'It will come right. And for what it's worth, I see no reason why memories like that shouldn't resurface over talk of war and things that were. Nor do I see,' se goes on,'why that disjointed remembrance should keep you from anything, unless you want it to.'

_Bless Rosemary_, Una thinks, and her _ability to talk _around_ a conversation_.

'I wonder,' and this affectionately, 'if you are not worrying over-much?'

'Possibly,' Una finds herself conceding.

'Shall we go down and have tea? I told Susan I couldn't talk without _doing_ something, and if we go on much longer, I shall begin to feel I was acting a lie when I said it.'

Rosemary is laughing, but she has stood up and is on her way to the stairs. 'tea is a good thought. But I do not for a minute believe you could act a lie, not even for all the tea in China.'

* * *

By this time they are downstairs again and Una has reached for the kettle. 'You know,' says Rosemary, half seriously, 'you might let me Play Mother today. You are so often doing the pouring out.' They both laugh this time, and it is good to be laughing like this, over something so inconsequential as who has charge of the Denby teapot. Rosemary takes control of it, and as she manipulates strainer and china, she says, 'you know, if you'd like to go walking for longer, I could settle Bruce this evening.'

Una thinks it is as well Rosemary has got the teapot, and indeed all of the china, because surely she would have dropped something.

But Rosemary says, 'don't look so like a caught-out schoolchild. I was told very firmly the other evening by Bruce, that just because he didn't have to be grown up to you, did not mean I could baby him always, and would I please just tell him a story and not sit by the bed? So I was in the drawing-room watching for you.'

Una smiles. 'Really I ought to let him go too.' Rosemary shakes her head.

'You mustn't. The one compensation I had was that I knew I'd be able to tell you and you'd understand.'

Una accepts her teacup and thinks how reciprocal the feeling is.


	3. Chapter 3

They had walked more often after that. It was lovely to walk in the fresh air, the smell of the sea blended with the end-of-summer flowers and sometimes the fresh smell that comes after the rain.

One evening he had said 'there's a memory at the corner of your mouth.'

'Is there?'

'It might be a song.'

She thought that entirely more plausible; 'the Church is One Foundation' had been going round her head ever since they'd walked past the church with the choir rehearsing.

He had said 'we had that last week, no?'

She said, 'I think we're fated to get it again. But it's a good hymn and singable.' But she had gone on all the same to tell him of a memory from very long ago, of her mother and white lilacs and the garden at Maywater.

* * *

Tea was pushed to one side because her hands were full, as were Rosemary's and all the women at Ingleside. Sometimes he came into the drawing room and chatted with them while they negotiated plans for flower arrangements and dress patterns.

A different afternoon, finding her with pins tucked into the corner of her mouth and yards of white lawn over her lap and Bruce climbing all over anything worth climbing on, he had said, 'shall we go to Carter Flagg's shop, Bruce? I think I saw an aeroplane model with your name on it, and some penny-sweets.'

Bruce had leapt at the chance and Una had waved them out of the room gratefully, saying around the pins, 'you mustn't spoil your dinner love.'

* * *

It had been then, although she was never to know it, that he promised Bruce. They ambled leisurely along the shore road and Bruce told him about school, which classes he liked, which he didn't, how dreadfully he missed Stripey.

'Father says we mustn't bargain with God, and Una says it too, but it did_ work_, didn't it? Jem came back and that made it all right. Although,' and this wistfully, 'it would be lovely to have a kitten again.'

'They are nice, aren't they,' Shirely had said. 'They keep to themselves unless they want you.'

"Mm,' said Bruce, unaware how like his sister he sounded when he said this. 'But they do let you fuss. Oh, I know Rilla's ginger cat had an awful temper, but it was ginger and Miss Cornelia says all ginger cats are like that. Do you suppose they are?'

He was not prepared to contend with Miss Cornelia. Not if Bruce was prepared to relay everything anyone ever said to all and sundry. 'Tell you what,' he had said instead, 'I'll keep my eyes open for another kitten. Only not straight away or your family will tell me off for spoiling you.'

Then Bruce had gone solemn and said, 'Mother wouldn't mind terribly. You're thinking of Una. You know, you never did-' and before he could finish, Shirley had said, 'I owe you a promise don't I?' and he had put his arm about the boy's shoulders and promised.

Bruce had beamed and hugged him fiercely, had said, 'I knew you would.'

They had not spoken much after that. Bruce thought it had been a terribly grown-up conversation to have, and he thought perhaps people who had terribly grown up conversations did not ramble quite so much as he did, so he had gone quiet. It was a lovely, adult quiet and he felt much older for it. They had gone into Carter Flagg's for the plane and the penny-sweets, and it was only then that they began to talk again, about planes and how they worked, all the way to Rainbow Valley, where they had constructed the miniature aeroplane and Bruce had remembered that while ten was very old, it was not too old to enjoy manipulating a toy plane. He had wanted to run up to the Manse with it, but had been gently talked out of this. And his mother and sisters did seem to be terribly busy.

* * *

Consequently, it was Una that came up to Ingleside that evening, ostensibly to say thank-you for relieving them of Bruce. She had brought some of the excess lawn for Rilla, in case she wanted it, and so Rilla had sat with them out on the veranda, talking ceaselessly of her own impending wedding until Shirley felt sure he should go mad and had receded into the house.

Their conversation came up to his room in snatches, and that was pleasant enough.

'Wouldn't you rather wait…'

'Rainbow Valley is lovely in autumn…'

'…have always preferred spring…'

'Do you never think about…' that had been Rilla, and he had stopped listening and gone to find Mother Susan, as ever in her kitchen. He gave her a kiss so she would know all was well, and she understood.

* * *

Later, as they walked together back to the Manse, he felt he ought to go too as the light had gone save for the moon, she had said, 'your sister can talk for Canada, can't she?'

Then Bruce had come tearing down the hill, 'look, look what we built Una! We made it in the afternoon while you were sewing.'

She had looked, had swallowed the urge to explain the difference between 'making up' and 'sewing' a dress, little boys didn't need to know such things, had laughed fondly when he raced back up the hill, aeroplane swooping up and down as he went.

It was Shirley that said, 'what are you thinking?'

She had said, 'every time I think he's nearly grown up he does something like that and I am reminded how young he is. And yet he's too big to have his mother sit by his bed while he falls asleep, or so I'm told.'

At the Manse she had said, 'do come in and have tea. I feel I owe you, and it has been such a long time.'

It was not all that long, but her days had become so full that it felt longer than it might have otherwise. Besides, it was good to sit in a drawing room restored to order and have tea and nearly-savoury Osbornes.

He had said, 'I've missed this,' and she had said, 'whatever will we do when we have to bake in earnest? We can't possibly give these,' here motioning to the platter of biscuits, 'to anyone else. The Glen would never hear the end of it.'

* * *

Somehow they managed. Una resolutely left the baking to Rosemary and Susan, feeling they could battle for charge of the cake quite competently without her. She and Faith took charge of what sewing hadn't been done, Faith venturing to say, 'you know I could have been just as happy with less fuss.'

Una, sewing four-stitches-and-pull and without a thimble at that, 'you might have said sooner, it's rather late in the day now,' but she had said it lovingly and her sister knew this.

Once, Faith had said, 'where is it you disappear to in the evenings?' and Una had said, 'out walking. Nowhere very interesting.'

Faith, seeing she would make no headway, had switched tacks and said, 'I never could sew like that. Although I think mother could do four-stitches-together.'

Una said, 'it does terrible things to your hands,' then in response to 'do you mind very much?'

'No, of course not. Anything for you dear.'

* * *

It had been worth it too, Una had thought, standing beside Faith that day in the church. She had been glowing with happiness, and she had waited so long to be happy. It more than made up for her own chapped hands and the hours of sewing. There were no lilacs, they were not a flower that meant anything to Faith, but there had been the first of the Michaelmas daisies and those suited her sister. The cake had been just as a good cake should be, rich, full of fruit, and sweet. She privately suspected it would not be just the Manse that omitted pudding for a week or two, but that did not matter either.

Bruce, full of the excitement of the day, had tried to coax her into dancing, but she had said no, they mustn't, wouldn't he sit and talk with her? So Bruce had climbed onto the chair next to her, for he could hardly sit on her lap with so many people about, cuddled against her side, and talked to her. It was nothing very memorable, most of it the kind of everyday chatter she took for granted when talking to Bruce. It was only when he said, 'I'll miss you, you know, when you've gone away too,' that she was startled into attentiveness.

She had pulled him closer, kissed his head and said, Bruce thought far to lightly, 'whatever put that into your head, love?'

She did not really need to ask, and some part of her , some corner of her mind, filled with anticipation when she tried to work it out. Bruce murmured happily and neither of them really believed her when she said,

'I shouldn't think anything would come of that, love.' Bruce had looked up at her, eyes full of light and contentment and said over the strains of 'Valse Frontenac,' 'I know it will,' with such conviction that she could not think how to answer. She kissed his head again and he burrowed into her, so that his head rested just under her breast, the way he had done as a very young boy.

He turned his head to look at her and said, 'you do love him don't you?'

And she had to tell him something, his eyes were so earnest. *'If love is four o'clock,' she had said, 'I should think I'm at half-past three*. I'm not going away yet, dear.'

'Half-past three,' said Bruce. 'I like that. You will tell me when it gets to be four o'clock? Just so I know?'

She squeezed him and said, 'I think you may know before I do. I ought to have you tell me.' But he was half-way to fairy-land and did not answer.

* * *

* This is lifted out of Dodie Smith's autobiography, _Look Back with Astonishment. _It was something her husband really did say to her when they were still courting, and I have always loved the sentiment.


	4. Chapter 4

**Many thanks for the reviews. I never expected anyone to read this when I sent it out into the world, never mind like it. Do keep at me if I revert to imbedded quotations. It's a combination of the kind of books I read and being brought up with a mother who wrote journalism columns that didn't allow for line breaks. **

* * *

Rilla, sitting at her window and looking out, told herself she did not mind about her brother walking over towards the Manse. She had once had an idea…but no, 'keeping faith' had meant _living_, really living, and she couldn't find it in herself to hold a grudge against her friend for trying to do so. Beside her on the sill was a jar of the Rosehip preserve Susan had been making all week. Rilla had mixed feeling about rosehip preserve but had promised all the same to take some round to the Manse. It occurred to her that if she went now, as she had meant to, she would almost certainly end up talking with Rosemary Meredith, who was nice enough, certainly one of the Race that Knew Joseph, but Rilla had always found her hard to talk to. No, it would be better to put off the errand until tomorrow, when Una would be in and they could talk.

* * *

Una had accepted the preserve graciously, running mentally through that week's meat from the butcher, seeing if _any _of it went with Rosehip and Cooking Apple preserve, before telling herself firmly that the whole point of preserve was that it could live in the pantry until you wanted it. So she had been able to thank Rilla as manners dictated, not mechanically, and to offer her a cup of tea with all the good nature that Rilla was used too.

Rilla had insisted on hovering in the kitchen while they waited on the kettle. Una was pouring milk into the creamer when Rilla said 'Can I ask you something?'

'It depends what,' Una had said warily.

Rilla had begun, concentrating very hard on the wood floor of the kitchen 'are you- '

Una had said, '_please_ not you too Rilla. I've had Bruce, and Susan and…feelings are such messy things. Please don't you start too.

'They are messy, aren't they?' said Rilla now. 'I'll leave it I promise.'

'Thank you,' Una had said, sounding far more grateful than Rilla thought was really necessary.

They had talked instead of the lawn Una had brought round, how well it suited what Rilla was hoping to do with her dress. Una asked dutifully after going-away clothes and Susan's baking, preparations for the 'house of dreams.' Rilla had confessed to not having put by terribly much by way of linen.

'Come on then,' Una had said, standing up, 'we'll see if we can't find something that suits.'

* * *

Rilla had protested, for form's sake, but Una would none of it ad they had gone up into the attic of the Manse.

'You're sure _you_ won't miss anything?' Rilla had said, trying to tread softly.

'I couldn't possibly Rilla. I'm up to my eyes in things I'm unlikely to ever need.'

And Una had knelt like a communicant and undone the lid to her 'box in the attic,' the thing that all her life Rosemary had called a hope chest. It was filled with pillowcases, table linen, towels, quilts, and she took them out now for Rilla.

'Is this…?' Rilla had asked nervously.

'My wartime project. It really was you know, whatever Susan tells you,' Una had said. They were looking at a tablecloth done all in whitework.

'There's another like it somewhere, here you are,' and she set it in Rilla's lap.

'When did you do all of this?' Rilla was asking now.

'Years ago, it must be at least ten years accumulation of sewing.' She laughs.

'Goodness knows why. I suppose I was pleased to have something that was mine. Something I could do.'

'You had music too,' Rilla points out.

'It's not quite the same though, is it? You have to go out of your way for people to see you're good at music. And I was surrounded by Faith, Nan, Di, you, such pretty girls. I remember thinking, oh it seems silly now, but I remember thinking that even if I wasn't so pretty as Faith or clever as Jerry, I could at least keep a house that looked well.' She smiles at the memory and Rilla wonders what would happen if she pointed out the house could still be a reality. Instead they sift through the pillowcases, dresser scarves, sheets, surely no one could ever need so many as Una has made?

'Did- Did you send Faith away with some of this?' Rilla hears herself asking.

'Not for want of trying. She hasn't our love of such things Rilla.'

'Mm,' says Rilla vaguely.

'I like it but I haven't the patience for this sort of thing. It takes so long. And I get sick of floral patterns after a while.'

'So do I,' says Una.

'There are some in here that have a religious turn, the dove-cross pillowcases, prayer-card cushion covers, things like that. But somehow,' she smiles, 'somehow I thought you'd rather the floral patterns.'

'However did you guess?' says Rilla.

* * *

The first time it happens they are walking though Rainbow Valley in the last of the light, each wrapped up in partially formed thoughts. Hers tend to the conversation she would not have with Rilla and his to the way the light has caught her hair, how glossy it looks in the dying light. Without really thinking about it, he reaches across and tucks a loose strand behind her ear. She had flushed and looked away, but did not take her arm from his, had curiously leaned more decidedly on him, and he had been glad.

This time she does say, 'what are you thinking?'

And he closes his eyes and tries to work out how to answer. When he cannot, he pulls her nearer and kisses her fleetingly, on the mouth.

She thinks of Bruce saying, 'tell me when it is four o'clock.'

She wonders that time should go so quickly, and wonders how she ever will tell Bruce.

* * *

The second time will be later that evening, just before they arrive back at the Manse, and it will be slightly too long to count with Una as something fleeting. She will say, as she has so often, 'Goodnight God Bless' as if it were all one word, before going quietly into the house. He will meet Rosemary returning from Ingleside and they will exchange quiet greetings.

She will say 'tell your mum…'

He will say 'tell Una…'

In spite of the fact they have both just left the same people and cannot possibly have any new news. Rosemary for her part, will come back to find Una kneeling at her window, ostensibly saying evening prayers to the garden, and looking for all the world as if Easter had come early and the resurrection with it, and will decide that 'goodnight' can wait until tomorrow.

* * *

That tomorrow had brought Shirley with a kitten for Bruce. He comes cautiously into the drawing room, where Una and Rosemary have been sitting, the curious multicoloured thing tucked under one arm.

'I hope it's all right,' he had said.

'I ought to have asked you first,' this to Rosemary.

But Rosemary's eyes are shining and she says, 'he'll be so happy. I'll go fetch him down.'

She is out of the room before Una can offer.

'Can I give you tea? We were about to put the kettle on.'

'If it isn't any trouble,' he says and wonders how often they have this conversation.

'None whatever,' she says and she disappears into the kitchen to get the tea things.

* * *

Bruce is down long before the kettle boils. He takes the stairs two at a time and tumbles into the drawing room. Rosemary comes into the kitchen and says, 'wherever did people get the notion he is quiet from?'

From the drawing room they can hear little yelps of delight and a good deal of laughing. When they come back, Bruce runs to Una, arms full of kitten and says,

'I've called her Moggie, do you think it will suit her?'

'More than suit, with colours like that,' says Rosemary, because Una is still organising her thoughts.

'She's not a bit like Stripey, but there never could be another cat like him,' says Bruce, and he cuddles the kitten close. It nestles against him and Una only has to look to see his cup has run over with its portion of happiness.

'Thank you,' she says later as she sees Shirley to the door.

'I've not seen his eyes glow like that in months. He loved Stripey so much.'

Shirley is reminded of that long-ago conversation on the walk back from town with Bruce.

'You've made him so happy,' she says now, and again, he thinks of an afternoon more recently and how alike brother and sister are. It is then, while he reaches for something to say in return, that she leans up and kisses him goodbye, saying, take care and won't he come back soon. She stands a moment at the door, after he has gone out, in an effort to restore some feeling of normalacy. It is all for nothing though because when she comes back into the drawing room, Bruce comes and joins her on the sofa saying,

'It's four o'clock now isn't it, or else very nearly?'

And she says, without thinking or even meaning to, 'I'm sure it is.'

Rosemary looks from one to the other and wonders what it is they are talking about when it is five and a quarter by the clock, and not without a pang, wonders too, what it is that has preoccupied her almost-child into not trying to take over the washing up for once.


	5. Chapter 5

**As ever, many thanks for the reviews. In response to one, I think the end is drawing nigh, I'm wary of spinning this out over-long but having conceived of the ending, did not want to rush into it in this chapter. You should see how and why when it comes, which I should think would be in the next chapter, two at the most.**

* * *

The end of autumn, full of fierce and fiery splendour, sees Rilla into her own home and away from Ingleside, and Una watches her go regretfully, for they have become firm friends and her own circle is not so wide and varied as Rilla's. Of course she promises to call on her often, but somehow Una knows this will not be quite the same. A divide has sprung up and it has to do with the conversation she would not have the day they poured over her hope chest.

Then the restriction on sugar is lifted and the death-knell sounds for the nearly-savoury Osborns and she finds she is almost sorry. Never for a moment does it occur to her that when Bruce flies out the front door after tea with two ginger-molasses biscuits it is to run up to Ingleside and proclaim the news of the restoration of adequate sugar to the Manse kitchen. Bruce, full of the feeling of achieving something good, never thinks in his turn that Ingleside will have the news already, because Susan has made a batch of fudge in celebration, and they do not let on. It is in this merry ignorance that he extends an invitation to tea to Shirley.

When he comes round, Una catches herself hunting out the curiously unsweet biscuits that have played such a role in their getting to know one another. Of course there are none to be had, and that is why she finds herself apologising for perfectly good baking. But he laughs and says,

'I'm sure they're good in their own right.'

Una says she hopes so; it occurs to her then that he has no acquaintance with her baking out of wartime and nerves make her hand shake as she does the pouring out.

'They have no memories connected with them,' she says and hands him his teacup.

'Not like the Osbornes.'

'Or the lilacs,' he says and adds, 'they are just as they should be. I wonder, will you ever be able to put out tea-things without apology?'

She almost apologises for this, but catches herself in time and says instead,

'It's just that I'm good at apologising.'

'Nonsense, you're good at lots of things.' And she finds she does not know where to look.

* * *

When Christmas comes in its turn they agree to go over the way to Ingleside. It is Mrs. Dr. Blythe's invitation, and there really isn't much point in having it separately, Una realizes, because Faith has been absorbed by the Ingleside family and Jerry is about to be. Carl is pleased because he is fond of Susan's cooking, which is not to say he dislikes his sister's or Rosemary's, only that he is used to it, and they know enough to know it is absentmindedness rather than maliciousness that causes him to say so, and they laugh when Bruce says he would rather have a small Christmas with his mother's goose and Una's shortbread. On one level, Una thinks she wouldn't mind a quiet Christmas at the Manse either, and she is half-tempted to send the others off minus herself and Bruce. Going to Ingleside means sorting out a host of parcels and she has no idea where to begin. For the most part, Rosemary has ideas of what would suit and Una is grateful to these. They sit up in her room talking them over and Rosemary says,

'Don't you think you ought to get used to doing this?'

'What makes you say that?' Una says now, tracing the pattern on her quilt.

'I don't believe for a minute you need telling,' says Rosemary gently.

* * *

It is just possible Rosemary is right, and she knows it, because certainly the sticking point is a gift for him and she does not ask Rosemary about that, almost-mother or not. She worries it out in her own time, not expecting anything herself, not really, but wanting a way to finally say thank-you for the conversations and cups of tea. In the end, she devotes an afternoon to initialling four sensible square handkerchiefs with a straight hem, because there is no danger of mistaking the gift for forwardness on her part. Bruce comes in while she is working at them and sitting down at her feet says comfortably,

'I told you you'd go away too.'

She doesn't know what to do with Bruce so decides levity is best.

'You said I'd go away 'soon.' I don't know how you define soon, love, but that was July, yes? And I'm still here for Christmas.'

Bruce has never been good with teasing, not even Una's gentle sort.

'You said it was only half past three then, and that was the end of July.'

Still, he looks at her in a way that seems to ask, _do you mind _and so she smiles at him and says he is right, that really she would miss him if she did go away. It doesn't quite chase the question out of his eyes, but he relaxes and clambers up beside her to inspect her work.

'Will they do, love?'

'Oh yes, they're nice and neat and without anything extra. Why do all mother's handkerchiefs have lace at the edge? Yours don't.'

This last said simply and the answer to that unasked question, at least, is uncomplicated. Una worked her own handkerchiefs as a child and supervised by Aunt Martha. Lace was not an option. She does not say this to Bruce, although it would not take much effort. Instead she says, and she is not afterwards wholly convinced it was herself who says it,

'Oh all mother's have handkerchiefs like that, mine did too.' This is true enough, but Bruce, ever thoughtful is prompted to say,

'You will want ones with lace then, eventually?'

'Don't be a goose,' she says laughing.

'I'm not,' he says earnestly. She would like to laugh again, but she knows Bruce would think she was laughing at him. So she works at her stem stitch, careful to keep her working thread below her needle, and says anxiously,

'I'm not –Bruce other things come first. None of them has been so much as been thought of.'

'But they have,' he says just as anxiously.

'I know you've sometimes thought of them Una, you just don't say. And I know…' but he has stopped because he is startled by seeing so much colour in his sister's cheeks and so he slips his hand into hers, taking it away from her sewing, and says,

'But they will come, I'm sure they will.'

She closes her eyes and shakes her head to clear it.

'They haven't yet,' she says, herself again, and Bruce is relieved to feel things have gone back to normal.

* * *

Christmas itself proves just as overwhelming as she had anticipated. It is good to be as close to all together as they can be again, but there is too much talking and questions she does not feel she can answer. How, for instance, is she supposed to answer Susan sensibly about father's sermon? No, she doesn't think candles especially 'Romish,' and what will Susan do with that information? Never mind that they have always had an Advent wreath. Nor can she say, when Nan waxes lyrical about the season, that Christmas is her favourite time of year, because privately she, like her father, prefers the solemnity of Advent. Christmas always feels…what? Anticlimactic perhaps. It is not like Easter, which blossoms radiantly and joyously out of the sombreness of Lent, each one enriching the other. She thinks Jerry might understand all of this, and say something about the symmetry about the liturgical year, but she knows Nan would not and so makes a non-committal noise and asks after Nan's mother. Nan, Una is relieved to discover, does not seem to find the inquiry out of place, in spite of the fact that she could have quite easily sought out Mrs. Dr. Blythe if she had wanted to. Rilla, hovering at the edge of this conversation, does notice but rather than say so, she steers Una away from Nan and says ,

'Everything all right? You look thoughtful.'

'Do I?'

'You do. As if you were unravelling the meaning of the world. Are you?' Rilla beams at her.

'No, but I may slip out for a minute. You won't mind?'

'Not at all,' says Rilla fondly. 'There are rather a lot of people, aren't there? Go on, I won't tell.'

* * *

It is cold out, but it is bliss to stand out in the cold after the warmth of the Ingleside drawing room. Besides, she doesn't mean to stay out long.

'Whatever possessed you to come out without a coat?' Shirley says and drapes a shawl over her shoulders.

'I didn't realize –'

'They talk, an awful lot, my family, much as I love them.' He leans on the veranda rail.

'Do you mind me following you out?'

She does not say that she had been assuming she had failed to notice him out already. Although her version does not account for the shawl. She pulls it about her now, it is reassuringly thick.

'Thank you for this,' she says now, but he only shakes his head and says,

'But I haven't given you anything. I was only being sensible.'

'It was a good thought,' she says firmly, and he is reminded of the imperatives she used to administer casserole.

'I still think you ought to have something properly seasonal to thank me for,' he says and reaches into his coat for a small flat box.

'It isn't terribly much I'm afraid.'

'And you accuse me of apologising,' she says, opening the box to discover a set of simply elegant combs.

'I thought they would suit you,' he says without looking at her.

'Thank you,' se says and gives him one of her rare, chaste kisses, exactly right in that moment, and simultaneously presses the parcel with the handkerchiefs into his hands.

'How did you know I was wanting more?' he asks, equal parts gratitude and curiosity.

'I was lucky. Bruce assures me they will do –'simple and neat' he said. I could always –'

'You will leave them as they are,' he says decidedly. 'They are exactly right.'

He puts an arm around her and draws her close for a moment and kisses her on the forehead. He does not entirely trust his family not to come creeping out of the woodwork.

'We ought to go in before we're missed,' she says and folds the shawl over her arm. He takes it from her saying,

'Rilla will wonder how you came to have it,' and she laughs properly for the first time that evening because she knows this to be good, sound sense.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you again for the feedback. I do look it over and write with you in mind, or try to. I'm pleased to find 'Lilacs' makes a sort of sense to people other than myself. **

* * *

The New Year comes in inauspiciously, while no one is paying it much attention. The days are short and cold and the Manse cat curls up close to the hearth, refusing to resent that she cannot go outside for more than minutes at a time. It is with effort that Una remembers that in Epiphany-time the days begin to stretch again, for they are doing so lugubriously, the sky watery and grey on a good day, and darker and mizzling on bad days. There is no chance of a walk in such weather, and even if there were, she would not trust him to the uneven muddiness of Rainbow Valley. So it is over tea and scones with currents that she learns he has let go of an old wish to farm in favour of negotiating figures and sums for other people. It is pleasing, he says, to balance these things nad make them come right.

'What about the aeroplanes,' she says, because it has never occurred to her before –why hasn't it ? –that he might prefer the groundedness of the earth, its easy and reliable rhythm.

'They were for wartime,' he says.

'And, you'll think this silly, but it was a way of distinguishing myself from Jem and Walter, they had both gone into the army and I never seem to do nearly so well if I follow them too closely. I thought if I went, I ought to make the experience mine.'

Una thinks of her sewing, of the things she confided in Rilla as they poured over her 'work,' and says it doesn't sound silly at all.

'Just so long as you're happy with figures and equations,' she says, and he assures her he will be.

* * *

It is not long after this that Carl comes into her room as she is making ready for sleep, and sits on the foot of the bed, watching as she combs out her hair.

'Isn't combing your hair out at night supposed to send sailors to their death?' he asks companionably.

'What a frightful thing to say Carl, where did you pick that up?' She does not stop , he notices, and he is glad because he hadn't meant to put her off. It is important he talk to her.

'One of the nurses when I was recovering after…'he trails off and spreads his hands and it is enough. They have both had enough of ghosts and shadows to last a lifetime.

'Some superstitions I can see the root of,' says Una, 'but not that one. I think, if you'll forgive me being practical, I will go on combing it out at nights to stop it tangling while I sleep.'

He laughs and they sit in unnatural silence while he works out what it is he wants to say. Long ago, he remembers, they talked often and easily about things that mattered to one another. He reaches now for the way to frame the problem he wants her help with.

'I've had a letter,' he says, 'from a professor who remembers me from Redmond. He is organising an expedition to study birds and bugs and things in the Amazon and he wonders whether I'd consider going.'

'But that's good news surely, Carl? You've always dreamed of going to exotic places.' She has never understood her brother's love of 'all things that creepeth upon the earth' or his dream of seeing far-away places, but in that moment she is more confused by his obvious hesitation than either of these things.

'I don't know. I haven't made up my mind about it.'

'What do you mean you haven't made up your mind? I thought 'one eye was enough to watch bugs with'?'

'It is,' he says uncertainly.

'Well then?'

'I'd like to go,' he ventures, and Una thinks _of course you'd like to go, and so help me that is not why you came in here with the look of a chastised dog about you; we both know you've never needed help before making up your mind when those beastly insects are involved_, but she only says,

'Then oughtn't you write and say as much?'

It's –they've –he goes on to ask if I would be bringing a wife.'

'I see,' and the piece of the jigsaw that Una has been missing fits into place.

She looks at him thoughtfully. Have they grown so apart that she hasn't noticed his acquisition of a sweetheart? She is overcome with a wish to have back the little boy that curled up on her bed during the days of the Good Conduct Club and cried till his eyes were red at the thought of sitting out in the Methodist graveyard till midnight. It was so much simpler then.

'Will you?' She asks instead.

'I don't know,' he says miserably and he looks so like that little boy of long ago that she puts her hairbrush down and comes to sit beside him, wrapping her arms round him as she does so.

'This isn't like you. You're making me look decisive, Carl, and that takes doing.' She is relieved when he laughs.

'It doesn't seem fair though,' he says,

'It's a very big ask, between the going hither, thither and yon and my eye on top of all the rest of it and I don't know if she would want to or if –and there are lots of better, more suitable -'

'Carl, do start at the beginning. I'm not naturally clever.'

_But you understand things_, he thinks. Still, he humours her and goes back, tells her about the letters while he was at war, and then in hospital, how full of life they were, and how like coming home it had felt, to call on Persis over the summer, to walk by the sea and he had almost thought –but he does not go on. It is Una who picks the conversation back up and says,

'If Persis Ford has half the sense God gave to geese, she would have you in a minute. And don't start about your eye, because it's healed over so you wouldn't notice and anyway, _I_ don't think it's fair to decide it matters for her. It seems to be the only thing you _have_ decided in any of this and it's the one thing you have no business to decide. You forget I know her Carl, and she strikes me as the sort of person who would resent more you making her mind up for her than the prospect of going round the world six ways from Sunday and having to do half your seeing for you.'

'Do you think so?' he says now, sounding almost cheerful for the first time since he came in, talking nonsense and superstitions from Heaven-alone-knew-where.

'Do I usually give you advice I don't mean?' she says, not liking to admit that she is only now realizing how much she means it.

He disentangles himself then, tucks her hands into his and looks at her thoughtfully. He wonders…but he knows better than to ask. She would tell him if she wanted to, he knows this. He knows too that he was right to come to her, not so much because she understands, although she does, but because now that she's given him an answer, he cannot shake the feeling that she has answered out of her own experience.

'No,' he concedes now, 'I don't believe you ever have. I'll write her tomorrow then?' He is not sure why it comes out a question, although Una seems to understand that too.

'Do,' she says, 'and no more nonsense. Good night, God Bless.'

'Goodnight, God Bless,' he says in his turn, kissing her head as he rises to leave.

'And thank you, you always make life seem so much clearer.'

'You know I'm here to listen,' she says and he nods. He has got as far as the door when she says,

'And Carl? Good luck in the Amazon.'

It is not until she is burrowed under her quilt that it occurs to her she never thanked Carl for helping put her own thoughts in order.


	7. Chapter 7

**Apologies for working the church calendar so much into this story. I really didn't mean to. It plays a part in my life and I feel Una would probably pay attention to it, even if none of the others do. I am trying to, to keep them suitably Presbyterian, because that is how LMM wrote them, but I am such a hopeless Presbyterian (and I really was confirmed one) and a better Anglo-Catholic that I may have failed in this. If so, more apologies and at least you know why I've gone wrong.**

* * *

Carl has his answer as ordinary time turns over into Candlemas. It is not a day the Manse observes, except Rosemary, ever quietly Episcopalian, and she only says, 'Oh good, a grey day. That means the end of winter and won't it be a blessing to put the laundry to air outside again?' But Episcopalian or not, the name has always held a charm for Una from a girl, implying as it does magic and far-away fancies.

* * *

It is in keeping then, with the spirit of the day, when Carl comes to find her, beaming as he has not since –but Una does not remember when.

'Thanks for talking sense into me,' he says. He makes no mention of doomed sailors that evening. If they're ought in this weather, Una thinks, they are doomed anyway.

'I'm glad you listened. When do I have to see you off?'

'With the Coltsfoot, but Rosemary says it doesn't matter because it will all be in the care of the Four Winds house and you won't have to do anything.'

'Don't be a goose. We'll have you're trunk to pack. You aren't leaving an awful lot of time.'

'The Coltsfoot might be late,' he ventures.

'It might. But the daffodils are more likely to be. Besides, I don't believe your professor really sets his calendar by the Coltsfoot in the Glen.'

'Just because _you_ don't find those things interesting…'

'I knew enough to know you meant March. Give me a little credit.' They laugh. Then he stops and says anxiously,

'You wouldn't keep a secret from me, would you?'

This confuses Una, who cannot see how it has anything to do with anything, or where it has come from. Never mind that there are myriad things she has never told Carl. But then, it isn't like him to ask.

'What are you thinking of?'

'I'm not really…but Rilla did seem to think there was a chance you might be…it was only an idea,' he says, rapidly reforming his sentence, startled by the colour she has turned.

'Do you really think I wouldn't tell you a thing like that?' she asks now. She will not look at him.

'No-o, I don't know. But you never do say half of what you're thinking…'

'Carl, the last time I said what I thought, it was to Irene Howard over the flower rota and a lot of good that did everyone.'

'I expect it did Irene the world of good. And you probably felt better for it.'

'Not much, and it didn't help Rilla's Red Cross efforts either.'

It occurs to her now that she ought to have let him finish, because really there are several ways his thoughts may have been running.

'It's neither here nor there about Irene Howard,' says Carl now. 'But if you were thinking of…well it would be nice to know beforehand if we have to let you go, that's all.'

'Rilla doesn't really think that, does she?'

'There isn't anything in it?'

'Don't sound so startled. I really _would_ have said if it was something like that. I'd have had to.'

She hopes that will be the end of it. She has been cherishing having Carl back and confiding in her, but somehow this is not a conversation she wants to have with him. Nor does she want to have to admit that she and Rosemary have talked increasingly often this way, about the sentiments and ideas he is trying to bring up.

'You make it sound almost likely,' he says cautiously. 'Is it?'

'I don't know,' and she begins to comb her hair with a vengeance. But he continues to sit on the edge of the bed, impossibly patient.

'It may come to nothing Carl, and there's no point trying to work out if it will. Goodness knows I've tried. And every time I do, I feel sure that I'll worry it into not happening, and not the other way around. Now, tell me about your letter.'

So he tells her about the plans he has begun to sketch about going away, the things in the letter that came in the post, what she will need to put by for him. Then she forcibly turns him out because she has yet to say prayers and the moon is high, and as he goes he turns back and says,

'I'm sure it will come to something you know.'

He does not hear, because she never fully forms the 'I hope so,' that weaves its way into her prayers.

* * *

'I think you're making an awful lot of fuss, Una,' says Bruce, because he cannot say that he is slightly jealous of all the attention she has been giving to Carl's going away. Not so long ago Faith had taken up lots of her time and Bruce hadn't minded, because, well because that was Faith and it was completely different,and anyway, he had got a model aeroplane out of it.

'Not at all, Februaruy's the shortest month in the year,' says Una without looking up from her ironing.

'Tell you what,' she says, relenting, 'go through to the kitchen and bring the cloves through and put them into the muslin pockets on the table.'

'Why?'

'It's how you keep things out of clothes,' she says patiently.

'It will take more than that to keep animals out of Carl's clothes, says Bruce darkly, but goes off to the kitchen pleased to have something to do. Una turns a shirt so she is now doing the sleeves and thinks Bruce is probably right. But it won't be for want of trying.

* * *

The daffodils are not late and the Coltsfoot is decidedly early, coming up at the end of February. This affects arrangements not a whit, to the relief of all involved. It is mid-March just as Una and Rosemary finish with starching, folding and packing and there is time for one last conversation before Carl goes to foreign lands. Una thinks he could have got there just as well from the top of a cherry tree but doesn't say so. She is sitting at the window, looking out over the Glen, when he comes in.

'I never had you down as a night-person,' he says, coming and sitting opposite her, on the side of the bed nearer the window.

'Hmm? I'm not,' this somewhat distractedly.

'Where have you gone to,' he says, which has always been Carl's way of saying _what are you thinking?_ She does not answer right away and when he asks it again, she says,

'Only thinking. Imagining where it is you will be going to, what it will be like, what weather you will have.'

'Were you?' He says pleasantly, 'you were quite aways away, you must have been thinking very hard. Was that really all it was?' The thought that rises into her throat is, _not this again_ but she only says,

'Carl, you are going away tomorrow. We've talked together and looked after each other, why shouldn't I be full of your going?'

'You weren't like this about Faith,' he says laughing, 'ought she to be jealous?'

'Nonsense doesn't suit you, you're too clever. Faith's only gone to the Upper Glen, and I see her often enough. You're going to God-Knows-Where to study insects, God-Knows-Why, to see us again Heaven-Knows-When.'

Carl beams at her. 'That sounds about right.'

'And I'm not supposed to miss you?'

'Well, maybe a little. But you'll write all sorts of letters and mother Bruce within an inch of his life, and leave no mending for Rosemary, and all will soon be right with the world.'

_Well as close to right as the world is likely to get for a while yet_, she thinks, and must have looked it because now Carl is saying,

'you've gone away again,' and she curses herself for laughing fractionally too late, for looking so decidedly out the window.

'I'm back now.'

'Good. Will you tell me something?'

She looks at him warily.

''You said the last time you said all of what you thought, it was to Irene Howard. What did you say to her?' She cannot help laughing.

'Gracious, Carl, you're making me think. It was during Lent, and you know how you can't have flowers on the altar in Lent; well Irene came in with daffodils, because it was one of those years when Easter fell just as late as it could manage, and said, 'won't these cheer things up? I notice we haven't had flowers in ever so long.' I tried, I really did, Carl, to coax her out of her preoccupation with those daffodils. I told her we could have them at Refreshment Sunday, which was next but one. We had all sorts of green, and I was trying to arrange that, and she wasn't helping a bit. But she kept on about how dull and dreary the church looked without 'a bit of colour' as if the purple stole didn't count - probably it didn't with Irene –and I ran out of patience and said it was hardly my fault no one had tried to explain the liturgical year to her, and if she wanted to do without it, the United Church was flexible about observing it and wanted members. Anyway, she left in a huff and never would give me the opening to make it up. She refused after that to be on the flower or coffee rota with me, which was fair enough and I can't say I minded, although I ought to have done because it's unchristian not to let a thing go.'

Carl laughs heartily, because the conversation as she relays it is both like and unlike his sister. Of course if she were going to be sharp with anyone over anything it would have to do with church. Una laughs too, over the memory –what a nonsense it all was.

'Rilla said it was no great loss because Irene hasn't the knack of arranging flowers, even if she has got a voice from out of Heaven, which is perfectly true - her arrangements are all angles and no focus -but I shouldn't be telling you that either because it's both unkind and gossiping.'

'Irene's earned it,' says Carl, an he laughs some more.

* * *

It is a comfort to her that their last conversation is a light-hearted one, that the picture he leaves her with is of him laughing as she kisses him Goodnight-God-Bless and sends him out of the room. She sits at the window only a little longer, saying to whatever God is there, 'God go with him, and _please_ let him be sensible and come home happy and healthy as he went. Persis too.' She pulls the quilt back and remembering Bruce's foreboding about the ineffectiveness of cloves to ward off bugs, finds herself thinking, _and please God let Rilla have warned Persis what to expect, Heaven knows I haven't_, before falling asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Here is the last instalment; it isn't too much longer than I'd anticipated. As ever, many thanks to those who have been reading, I hope it's been as enjoyable as the writing was for me. **

* * *

Rosemary understood what the greengages meant long before Una did, but could not say so. Shirley had come up the walk with a basket full of them, joining Una and Rosemary on the small porch where they were sitting mending. He had been coming with increased frequency, Rosemary thought, ever since Carl had left, apparently to fill some kind of deficit created by Carl's going; sometimes taking Bruce off for an afternoon, often joining them for tea, just as often suggesting long evening walks that Rosemary forbore to take part in. Notionally, Bruce could have put himself to sleep, but it was a thought she could not face and so ignored.

Now he put the greengages down and said, seemingly to both of them, 'I saw these and remembered Susan singing the praises of your recipe for plum jam.' Rosemary has never in her life made plum jam. She has never had access to plums. There were none at the house on the hill and there are none at the Manse. It is Una's mother that had the recipe for plum jam because there were both Victoria and Damson plums at the Maywater Manse. Rosemary knows this because when she first began teaching Una to cook, it was the wish of the girl's heart to master her mother's recipe and it had been a sore trial to Rosemary to tell her they could not. But they had made so many other varieties of preserve and jam that the deficiency was more than made up for. It had never occurred to her that she might have given the recipe to Susan Baker, who did sometimes receive parcels of plums from the Crawfords. But she cannot mind because Una's eyes light up on seeing the fruit, and the shadow of a memory steals into her eyes, and she looks almost like the Maywater child again in her delight.

'Where did you find them?' she says now, turning one over in her hands as if it were Manna and she one of the God's people in the wilderness.

'I'll show you,' he says, and she only looks fleetingly at Rosemary, more apology for going than asking leave to go, Rosemary thinks. And she has to smile her assent. How could she not?

* * *

Una had anticipated plum trees in some unexplored pocket of Rainbow Valley, or the Glen at a stretch. She had not expected the queer little house that fronted the river, so that as far as she could work out, you had to enter always by the back door, for the simple reason that the front door was on a slope, with a greengage tree in what must have been the back garden.

'Won't someone mind,' she says when he moves to open the gate to the yard, and she is surprised by how easily it yields. It had not looked like the sort of gate that would.

'There's no one too mind, it's quite unlived in. And Mother Susan says if you don't take the plums down from a tree when they're in season –'

'You won't get another crop the next year,' Una finishes. 'Mother used to say that when the Maywater plums came into their own. It's one of the few things I remember her saying.'

'I didn't bring nearly all of them,' he says half-seriously, and she laughs and says,

'I should hope not. We would never get through them in time.'

'Not even if you made jam?' he asks to tease her.

'Do you have any idea how much jam you have to make for it to be a worthwhile exercise?' she says in her turn, and says it in such a way that had anyone else used it, it would have passed for playfulness.

'No idea at all,' says Shirley unapologetically.

'If I told you we were still getting through the strawberry that Rosemary and I made before the war,' she begins,

'I'd take you at your word.' He says fondly. 'But surely that's a good thing? Doesn't it take an awful lot of sugar to make jam? Wouldn't it have been awkward to try and make it in wartime?'

'It would have at that,' then in response to, 'how much did you make that it got through four years?' she says,

'Curiosity killed the cat, I thought, or at least frightened the last one out of Ingleside,' and there is no getting around the playfulness in her words this time. Then more seriously,

'You're forgetting how few of us were in the house by the end. And how enthusiastic Bruce is when it comes to collecting strawberries. I think there must have been sixty jars, and we couldn't bake them into anything or they might have done as tarts. As it is, we've almost seen the end of them, and not too soon either because Bruce is counting the days on the calendar until he can gather more.'

'You're not really telling me it's been four years since he brought strawberries home?'

'No-o, only that it's been a long time since we used them to make preserve, or made preserve at all.'

'Why not gather more of these and you can remedy that?' he says and steers her towards the greengage tree. She tries to resist, because it seems the only sensible course open to her in that moment, so he says,

'All right, wait until it's yours and make up jam here, would you?' And she says, only half realizing what she says,

' Yes, I could be happy here,' before realizing how they are talking and being seized with sudden anxiety that she has put herself too far forward. She only realizes that she has not and all is well when he takes her hands, as she took his that evening over a year ago, when the lilacs had not yet bloomed and the weather still justified casserole, and says,

'Could you really?'

She only inclines her head and murmurs some sort of affirmative noise, but it is enough to banish long-ago ghosts and the sense of unreality that momentarily overwhelmed him. They stand like that for a minute, not quite an arm's length apart, under the greengage tree, her eyes cast down and his heavenward, both equally full with feeling. But it is only a minute and then he draws her near and murmurs something in his turn, so that they make their way companionably out of the garden and walk back towards the Manse.


End file.
